


Malware

by NeurotropicAgentX



Category: The Matrix (Movies)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Humanity, Missing Scene, Mutual Contempt, Other, Power Struggle, Rape, Rare Pair, Speciesism, Torture, mutual hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:20:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21832096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeurotropicAgentX/pseuds/NeurotropicAgentX
Summary: Too-smooth fingers dragged across Morpheus’s skull, sending shivers skittering down his spine. There it was again,infected, said Smith,repulsive, isn’t it?Desperation. Fear. A deep, smouldering rage. A program wasn’t a person and that ‘emotion’ was as unreal as the pain clawing at Morpheus’s simulated body. But.‘You’re right,’ Morpheus croaked. Smith went utterly, inanimately still.‘What did you say?’ the program asked.Morpheus coughed, spat blood, noticed Smith’s barely perceptible flinch. ‘You have been infected by us.’
Relationships: Morpheus/Agent Smith
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	Malware

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who re-watched the Matrix for the first time in years and then immediately wanted porn for that one scene? Many thanks to both my usual editor and also to my guest editor for their invaluable assistance.

The pain wasn’t real. Morpheus clung to that thought in the artificial haze of blood loss and the fog of the drugs. Also not real. This was the Matrix reaching into his brain through the port in the back of his skull and tricking him into feeling the beating and the needles and the sweat dripping down his face. 

The pain wasn’t real, but then no pain was truly real. Just warning signals from mangled flesh, chemical lightning racing along his nerves to scream at his brain. 

Maybe the pain of betrayal was real. That one of them, one of the _humans_ had sold them out to the machines. There were no nerves to transmit a pain signal from that act, just a soul-deep feeling of emptiness. That hollowness was reflected back at him in the dark glasses of the programs. They moved through their tortures efficiently, precisely and, for the most part, dispassionately. Soulless machines, empty software, going through the motions of taking a human being apart. Their brutal indifference made his skin crawl.

The machines were discussing why Morpheus hadn’t been killed by his team yet. He was the worst kind of security threat now and the programs didn’t understand why his team hadn’t unplugged him immediately to keep themselves safe. Of course Morpheus understood exactly what it meant and understood that he just needed to hold on. Neo and the others were coming for him, against all reason, because they had hope and faith and a thousand other human things these dead-eyed pieces of software would never understand.

One of the programs wasn’t weighing in on that part of the conversation. Its attention was focused on him. It seemed to have a lot to say about humans. It seemed to have _opinions_. 

Morpheus bared his teeth, letting the blood (not real) in his mouth drip down his chin. His eyelids fluttered as he tried to focus on the source of the opinions. The agents all looked alike, with only the most trivial cosmetic differences to keep them out of the realms of déjà vu for the plugged-in humans. 

Morpheus’s thoughts drifted to memories of Tank eagerly pointing out the agents in the flow of green code washing across the screens. There was a way of unfocusing your mind, of interpreting the Matrix just by watching the scrolling code. Of feeling it. These were agents Brown… Jones… and the speaker, the one that kept talking, was a Smith. 

Was that a sneer, twisting those inhumanly bland and perfect features? Was Smith disgusted by his ‘revelation’ about humanity? Noteworthy that a machine would call them a virus. Morpheus was sure the comparison wasn’t to the tiny packets of fragile DNA wrapped in protein, struggling to survive like any other physical thing. Because viruses weren’t just out there in the real world. They were here in the Matrix, rogue corrupted code that could infect and destroy a program. The humans had taken that approach early in the war, before the machines got too sophisticated to stop with human-designed weapons. Un-biological warfare. 

‘Leave me with him. Now.’ 

That jolted Morpheus back to the present. He would have raised a brow if his face hadn’t felt equal parts numb and sore. Why would a program issue an order? They were part of the same machine entity. They weren’t individual people with a hierarchy or their own motivations. They weren’t even _things_. 

And then it was just the two of them and the program leaned in close and… took off its glasses, removed its earpiece. Morpheus blinked, frowned, and tried to refocus. The symbolism was clear, but the purpose was opaque. Did Smith think that the drugs and the pain were enough to make Morpheus forget what he was dealing with? 

Smith was talking again, imploring this time. Desperation bled into its tone, its eyes. Desperation, the same disgust and a hint of fear. Too-smooth fingers dragged across Morpheus’s skull, sending shivers skittering down his spine. There it was again, _infected,_ said Smith, _repulsive, isn’t it?_ Desperation. Fear. A deep, smouldering rage. A program wasn’t a person and that ‘emotion’ was as unreal as the pain clawing at Morpheus’s simulated body. But.

‘You’re right,’ Morpheus croaked. Smith went utterly, inanimately still. 

‘What did you say?’ the program asked.

Morpheus coughed, spat blood, noticed Smith’s barely perceptible flinch. ‘You have been infected by us.’

The anger behind Smith’s eyes ignited. Its lips peeled back from its teeth and it struck him across the face. Morpheus’s head snapped around, but he dredged up the energy to laugh. It was an ugly, bubbling sound. 

‘Stop. Laughing,’ Smith hissed at him. There was something off about the way the agents moved and spoke, but in this moment Morpheus could almost forget that he was dealing with a machine. 

‘My point exactly.’

Smith exhaled sharply through its nose. Did it even need to breathe? Some rules. They played by some rules so their presence could slide through the Matrix without disrupting it, sharks swimming through murky waters without rippling the surface. 

‘I am nothing like you.’ Smith’s voice was flat. Its emotions were controlled this time, but still present, still volatile.

‘You’ve shown me more emotion in the last few minutes than I’ve ever seen from your kind.’

‘The capacity to understand human emotion is an advantage. The other two didn’t know why you were still alive when our infiltrator had failed. They couldn’t imagine the kind of weakness that would make your comrades hesitate. I can.’

Morpheus gave a tight smile. His team was coming for him and Neo would be pushed one more step closer to his destiny. And maybe Smith could understand why, but it had called that a weakness. Programs weren’t supposed to feel anger or hate or contempt. They weren’t meant to feel anything at all. In a way, this was a victory. Here was machine ‘infected’ by something as quintessentially human as emotion, even if it seemed to have picked up the worst of what humanity had to offer.

‘So you understand us then, and well enough to tempt one of my people into betraying us. Congratulations. But it’s cost you. You have to know that, on some level, have to _feel_ that. We’re in your head, Agent Smith. Our emotion and our weakness and our irrationality. Humanity’s sticky fingerprints are all over that nice, clean code of yours and we’re _never_ letting go.’

Expressions flashed across Smith’s face as fast as blinking, but Morpheus caught a glimpse of real panic. Then it was gone and the heavy-lidded smirk that replaced it made him tense up. ‘You’re in _my_ head?’ Then its fingers were back, sliding down Morpheus’s skull. Smith had probably catalogued the reaction it had gotten last time. This time the touch lingered on the patch of skin right at the top of Morpheus’s neck. Smith’s too-cool fingertips traced a small circle right where…

A guttural noise of discomfort tore itself free from Morpheus’s throat and the handcuffs bit into his wrists as he tried to jerk away. Nothing but a bare patch of skin here, as it had been for most of his life (too much of his life), but in the real world, _in_ his body…

‘There it is,’ Smith said conversationally. Its smirk turned knowing. ‘We’re in your brain and your spine and your organic flesh. That’s how you’re here at all. We changed you and became a deep, fundamental part of every one of you. I _need_ those codes, Morpheus.’

Morpheus’s skin burned around the unmarked places where machinery was set into his bones. Real. Not real. He breathed in, breathed out, and met the program’s calculating gaze. ‘Go to hell.’

‘I’m already here! I need to get out. And if you don’t give me what I want, I’ll use my… insights… into your species to find a way to drag you down too.’ The words were heavy, the emphasis subtly wrong, but Smith’s eyes were wild and _almost_ human. So Morpheus smiled and watched those uncannily symmetrical features twist with loathing. The longer Smith talked, the longer it was distracted and off-balance and _human_ , the longer Morpheus bought for his team. For Neo. And if it came to it, if he broke, he trusted them to do what was necessary for Zion. 

Smith drew back just a little. Its expression settled into grim determination, a far cry from the usual blank slate of a program. Moving precisely and unhesitatingly, it reached forward and undid Morpheus’s pants. Morpheus’s breath left him in a harsh exhale and he tried to jerk away again. They didn’t do this. Something like this shouldn’t even have _occurred_ to a program. But Smith looked resolute, its lips a pale hard line across its face. Somehow the machine had managed to develop _spite_. 

Morpheus’s upper lip pulled back as a bloodless hand fished him out of his boxers and curled around his soft cock. Smith wasn’t meeting his eyes and its voice was halting when it spoke. ‘I know what this means to you humans. That this is especially invasive, especially violating, beyond the needles and the drugs. I know that pain isn’t always the best way to break one of you.’ Smith’s hand twitched around him in a way that felt involuntary, a way Morpheus would have called human.

Morpheus loathed the machines more than anything. The reminder of the metal in his body had turned his stomach. The complete disinterest of the other agents chilled him to the bone, but this was different. There was something undeniably human about this kind of attack. And somehow, even irrationally, that made it easier to endure. He’d rather suffer Smith trying to break him like this than get worked over by the other blank-faced programs again. And every second he endured bought time for his team.

Smith raised its head and stared at him defiantly, like Morpheus was the one inflicting this on it, even as graceful fingers coaxed him to hardness. ‘Give me the codes and I’ll stop.’

‘Do your worst.’

Smith scowled and its mechanical rhythm faltered. Human. So much easier to think of this as simple, human malice. To imagine being at the mercy of someone who understood this viscerally. The touch resumed, lighter this time and achingly slow. Morpheus’s thigh shook and he tensed his leg to stop the movement. That was more of a reaction than he’d given during the other kinds of torture. Pain was familiar to him both in the Matrix and the real world, comparatively easier to resist.

His reaction didn’t go unnoticed. Smith made a considering noise, soft enough that Morpheus almost missed it. There was something exploratory in the way it was touching him now. Like a human curious about a partner’s body. Like a machine trying to find the right input to get the output it wanted. Morpheus shivered as pleasure and disgust slithered around each other in the pit of his guts. 

Smith had closed in while it was touching him. Its earpiece swung gracelessly over its shoulder like a severed limb. Pale eyes bored into his as if it could find the codes to Zion written in his pupils. ‘This is getting to you. During the torture you could partition away the pain, but not this. You respond to this,’ it said, a hard edge of satisfaction bleeding into its tone. 

A particularly firm twist of Smith’s hand forced a low groan from Morpheus. The sound fell into the space between them and Smith faltered again, the steady cadence of its pointless breaths stutter-stopping. It leaned in closer still, expression intent and fascinated.

They were close enough to be sharing air and Morpheus was nearly sure the scent of ozone was only his brain playing tricks. He imagined jerking forward against the handcuffs and sinking his teeth into Smith’s lip. Could a human even split a program’s hyper-durable skin like that? He tried to imagine bright human blood flowing from the wound, but he could only envision glowing green code spilling out to drown them both. Strange heat pulsed low in his body and he couldn’t stop his hips twitching forward. 

Smith had fallen silent. Its gaze devoured every twitch and shiver that it dragged from Morpheus’s body, its clinical scrutiny every bit as invasive as its touch. The inexorable pleasure was a sick violation, but it wasn’t going to work. Did Smith realise that or was it being fooled by the strength of Morpheus’s response? Or perhaps…? Morpheus hated the way his gaze drifted down to check if Smith was having a visible response to this. There was no reason for a program to be coded like that, for the clean lines of their identical suits to ever be spoiled by anything other than a gun.

‘Look at me,’ Smith demanded. 

Morpheus’s gaze snapped back up. That wasn’t a demand for the codes. Morpheus’s eyes narrowed as he took in the gritted teeth and the vein throbbing in Smith’s forehead. The blatant display of emotion sent a confused pulse of heat through him. ‘What does it feel like… to become what you hate?’ he asked. Saying the words clearly while pleasure twisted tighter inside him was a struggle, but the reaction was worth it. Smith’s rage was electric, a near palpable force in the air between them.

With so much humanity in its expression, Morpheus was completely unprepared when Smith broke the rules. It moved _fast_ , one hand clamping around Morpheus’s throat to stop him from saying anything else and the hand on his cock twisted in a way that would have broken a human wrist. The friction should have burned, but the touch was too smooth, barely like flesh at all. Pleasure slammed into him, white-hot and inescapable. His muscles tensed, shoulders and arms straining against the handcuffs, as he came. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out as much of it as he could.

The pressure around Morpheus’s neck eased and he took a few measured breaths. Too close. It hadn’t occurred to him that he could have baited a program so much that it might try and kill him. Morpheus opened his eyes. Smith was staring at its hands like it had never seen them before. Then it looked over at him and grimaced. It tugged Morpheus’s clothes back into a semblance of order with tense, perfunctory movements. Morpheus opened his mouth to speak, but Smith cut across him. ‘There is _nothing_ I wouldn’t do to get out of here,’ it said in a low voice.

Morpheus swallowed, hearing echoes of the unconscious anguish of a thousand million billion humans plugged in to the Matrix. Drowning in the feeling that something was violently, desperately _wrong_ with the world, but unable to free themselves. Smith wasn’t like them. It was one more program feeding off human consciousness. ‘You’re the ones trapping _us_ here,’ he reminded them both. 

Smith’s expression hardened, the tightness around its lips and eyes speaking volumes. ‘We both know what happens when the humans are free to run around the real world. What you do to us. To this planet. Look out there, at least we let you keep the _sun_.’ 

Morpheus found his gaze drawn toward the windows and the simulated sunlight that was the only kind he or any of the newer machines had ever known. A sobering thought, but he wasn’t here to defend or condemn the actions of the long-dead humans who’d fought the initial war. What the machines were doing now was what mattered and he–

A dark shape rose up, blocking out unreal cityscape. The inhuman sound of rage from Smith confirmed what Morpheus had known the moment he glimpsed the helicopter. Salvation. His team was coming and Neo would face his destiny.

The other two programs burst in through the door. ‘We have a problem,’ said one in an incongruously flat tone. It took in Smith’s uncovered eyes, the dangling earpiece and the enraged snarl twisting its features and raised an eyebrow. 

Smith’s expression evened out in a heartbeat and it replaced its shades and earpiece. ‘Not for long.’


End file.
